DOVER — It cost the Attorney General's office $310,783 to convict Seth Mazzaglia for the murder of Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott. And that is just a small part of what it took to put the city man behind bars for the rest of his life. The public defenders office, sheriff's office, state police, and Dover Police Department all incurred substantial costs when it came to the time and money they invested into Mazzaglia's monthlong trial for first-degree murder, conspiracy and falsifying physical evidence.

By Kimberley Haaskhaas@fosters.com

DOVER — It cost the Attorney General's office $310,783 to convict Seth Mazzaglia for the murder of Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott.

And that is just a small part of what it took to put the city man behind bars for the rest of his life. The public defenders office, sheriff's office, state police, and Dover Police Department all incurred substantial costs when it came to the time and money they invested into Mazzaglia's monthlong trial for first-degree murder, conspiracy and falsifying physical evidence.

The director of administration at the Department of Justice, Rosemary Faretra, reported this week that taxpayers paid $228,388 in prosecutor's fees and $36,543 for attorney support staff to date. The AG's office began working on Mazzaglia's case soon after Marriott's death on Oct. 9, 2012. Mazzaglia was arrested on Oct. 13 after an 11-hour interview where he told police he had killed Marriott during a BDSM threesome, a story prosecutors contend was an alibi for his gruesome strangulation and rape of the 19-year-old University of New Hampshire student.

Faretra said litigations costs equal $30,613. Those numbers include $21,328 for a hand writing expert, who poured through pages of letters Mazzaglia wrote to his “sex slave” girlfriend, Kathryn “Kat” McDonough, 20, while in jail at the Strafford County House of Corrections.

Faretra said it should be noted that the state has not yet received a bill from Dr. Scott Hampton for his services, so no cost can be for his testimony. As an expert witness, Hampton, who works as the executive director of Ending the Violence, explained the cycle of abuse in relationships to the jury after McDonough took the witness stand. After the conviction, jurors said Hampton's testimony affected their perception of Mazzaglia and gave weight to the story the state presented of the defendant being a cold-blooded killer who had abused a much younger girlfriend who he started grooming at the age of 17.

On the public defender's side, the cost of obtaining their expert witness, Dr. Ira Kanfer of Farmington, Conn., is easy to establish, as that information came out during trial. Kanfer is paid $4,000 per day, and he was used by the defense team one day before the trial as well as on June 23, when he told the jury he believed that Marriott died of suffocation while McDonough sat on her face during consensual sex.

It is harder to break down the dollar amount it cost taxpayers in attorney's and support staff fees to defend Mazzaglia.

According to Randy Hawkes, the executive director of the New Hampshire Public Defender's Office, unlike private attorneys, where clients are billed in six-minute increments, public defenders are free to work on their caseloads without logging in and out of computer screens which track hours.

Hawkes said that while public defenders Joachim Barth and Melissa Davis prepared for Mazzaglia's trial, they each served nearly 300 other clients. Barth had 291 and Davis had 288 cases during the 20-month period they worked with Mazzaglia to prepare for his murder trial.

“We take 86 to 87 percent of the criminal cases in the state,” Hawkes said. “Sometimes attorneys work 80 hours a week, all on salary.”

Hawkes said the public defender's office contracted with the state for $18,875,000 in fiscal year 2014. With that money, 28,000 cases are handled by 124 attorneys. Defenders capable of handling a major murder trial, like Barth and Davis, are paid between $75,000 and $78,000 per year.

Sheriff David Dubois, whose department was in charge of handling the logistics of the trial at Strafford County Superior Court, said it cost taxpayers $30,186.84 for staffing.

Of that figure, $26,000 was related to the movements of Mazzaglia and security in the courtroom. Moving McDonough back and forth to the women's prison in Goffstown during her 10 days of testimony cost just over $2,500.

“We developed detailed staffing plans for each day of this event based on threat assessments and standards we are trained to that involve potential issues with inmate movements, court room/personnel security, witness protection, protection of the jury, gallery control and media coverage,” Dubois said.

Lt. James Geraghty of the Major Crimes Unit at New Hampshire State Police and Police Chief Anthony Colarusso of the Dover Police Department do not have methods of tracking individual hours for officers and detectives who worked on the Mazzaglia case, but both men said thousands of hours went into the detailed police work that proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“We recently switched to a time card system, so I cannot get an exact number,” Geraghty said. “But this case started as a missing persons case with us, the AG's office and the FBI. We were involved in it, figuring out where it happened and what had happened, until it became Dover's case.”

In the first few days of Marriott's disappearance, state police, the FBI, New Hampshire Fish and Game and local law enforcement agencies in Dover and surrounding communities invested hundreds of hours trying to track down the marine biology major.

Those agencies stayed involved to a certain degree after the case was turned over to Dover police.

For example, seven members of state police, four special agents from the FBI and 24 officers from nearby police departments were all initially expected to join 24 members of the Dover Police Department on the witness stand during trial.

Colarusso said that once they got the case, his department invested time into ensuring both Mazzaglia and McDonough were brought to justice. Recorded interviews between key witness Roberta Gerkin of Rochester and McDonough were arranged for by Dover detectives.

McDonough is serving 1½ to 3 years in the women's prison for her involvement in Marriott's death.

Colarusso said it is near impossible to assign a dollar amount to the work his department did in preparation for trial because it is part of his annual budget. The reality of police work in Dover, Colarusso said, is that there is a murder approximately every 15 months.

Mazzaglia's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 14. Barring a successful appeal, Mazzaglia will spend the rest of his natural life in prison because he was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. Each conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Mazzaglia is scheduled to stand trial for a criminal solicitation charge relating to his alleged attempt to break out of Strafford County House of Corrections, so these costs will continue to pile up. Jury selection should begin for that trial on Nov. 3.